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Mahomet and the golden camera

12 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in writing

≈ 13 Comments

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faction, Serjilla, Syria

This is a piece I imagined based on my encounter with the family in Serjilla that I mentioned in my last Postcard from the past. I’m not much good at writing fiction, but I really enjoy taking a kernel of reality and playing with it. That’s what I’ve done here. It was written a while back in the days when I was semi-prolific. Next week, I’m having a writing retreat at Potato Point with a writing friend, and I’m hoping concentrated time and the presence of a critiquer will inspire a few changes of style and a flurry of writing. I’m also posting it as I procrastinate over a background piece for my time at Pella in Jordan.



Mahomet peered around the ruined stone wall. There she was again, an old woman, a foreigner, on her own. She was shabbily dressed. She didn’t look like most of the tourists who visited his home. They usually came in crowds on a bus and they didn’t stay long. She came in a battered yellow taxi and she’d been here wandering around for ages, ever since he came up after dinner to look at the motor bike the archaeologists always left parked near where they were digging.

She looked poor – for a tourist – but in her hand was a golden camera. It gleamed in the cold Dead City sun, against the green grass, the blue sky and the stone of the ruins. She had taken many photos, of strange things sometimes. She seemed to be photographing blades of grass and single stones. She seemed to like taking photos through windows or doors.

Mahomet was good at watching. It was one of the things he really liked doing, when he could get away from his younger brothers and sisters and his mother who always seemed to want him to do something. Sometimes he watched ants and scorpions, but they belonged here. What he really liked doing was watching strangers and trying to figure them out. Why were they here? What was their life like at home? How did they get the money they always seemed to have lots of?

Sometimes he talked to them. He didn’t know much English or French or German, but he was proud that he knew more than they knew Arabic. Suddenly he decided he would talk to the old woman with the golden camera.

She was staring at one of the old roofless buildings. He said “Madam …” and she jumped and looked startled.

“Oh. Hello.” she said in a flat voice.

“You want me to show you places?” he asked.

“How much?”

 It was his turn to look startled.

 “For free. No money.”

He moved off towards one of the buildings he knew she would like. It had plenty of window and door holes and enough grass to keep her happy forever. They didn’t talk much. She held the golden camera and used it often, as they rambled away from the centre of the buildings. She was happy to follow him. Sometimes he asked questions about the camera.

 “Why do you take so many photos?” “What do you do with them all?” and finally “Why is your camera golden?’

 She looked surprised again.

 “Golden? I suppose it is golden. It was just the one I bought, because it did the things I wanted to do. “

 “How strange foreigners are,” he thought. “She has a golden camera and she didn’t even know it.”

As they approached the last building he planned to show her he heard the sound of voices. Oh no. He recognized them. His mother and Saleh and Ahmed and all of them. And there they were coming up the hill their heads first and then the rest of them. His mother called him

“Mahomet. What are you doing? Are you annoying the lady?”

Suddenly he saw his opportunity. Tourists like having photos taken with the locals. His family were locals and there was even a baby. Babies seemed to be especially attractive. He couldn’t figure out why. This might be his chance to hold the golden camera and even use it. He’d never used a camera, never even held one.

 “Photo madam? You like photo with my family? I will take it.” He held his breath.

 “I’d love a photo” said the old lady. She handed him the camera, putting the strap around his neck.

“You look through here,” she said. “And when you can see the picture you want to take, you press this button.”

He peered through the viewfinder. There was his family. The baby’s nappy was sagging and his mother was squinting in the sun. His sisters preened and looked important and his brother, he knew, was about to whinge: “I want a turn to. Give me a turn.” Behind them was the familiar landscape, strangely carved off and boxed by the little viewing hole.

He pressed the button, holding the golden camera steady. And then he pressed it again, and again and again till there were ten photos of his family locked up inside. What a pity he would never see them, and how much he wanted a camera of his own.

The lady took back the camera and told him to stand with his family and she took two more photos. Then she said something astonishing: “Do you want to see?” They all crowded round and he noticed a tiny screen. In the sun you could see nothing, but in the shade there they were, caught on this sunny day with a chill in the air.

The lady said thank you and went back to her yellow taxi. Mahomet no longer wanted to buy a motor bike more than anything else in the world. He wanted a golden camera to catch all the things he saw and keep them forever.

Postcards from the past: the Dead Cities, Syria

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, Postcards from the past

≈ 14 Comments

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Serjilla, Syria

 

January, 2001

We leave Afamia and head first through pleasant country towns, and then back into rocky country where the roads are fenced with stone walls and groves of olive trees are subtle against furrowed red soil. The Dead Cities are a mystery: no one is quite sure why they died, although there are certainly theories. I visit Serjilla, a feast of ruined buildings, tumbled grey stone, mossy rocks, vivid green grass and lacey stone fences. No sign at all of wild dogs slavering rabies, contrary to warnings. I ramble around enjoying sun, silence and solitude. There are not many people, just a group of archaeologists and then, suddenly, cresting a rise, one by one, a family, including a baby in a very damp nappy. The son, an adolescent male, orchestrates a photo session, full of self-confidence and cheek. He’s fascinated by my gold camera and manages to coax my carefully hoarded small coins into his possession.

The day isn’t over yet. We stomp around the mud of an olive grove near a tomb with a high-pitched roof, and visit a ruined church at Al Bara. As we drive back to Hama, the shafts of sunset illuminate the shrinking mountains. I give Abu Farouz £200 Syrian as a thank you and rush off to a juice stand, whose proprietor either wants to know how many children I have, or to give me babies.


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For background and current history see

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/jan/09/syria-dead-cities-byzantine-archaeology

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/serjilla

http://www.kuriositas.com/2013/08/the-dead-cities-of-syria-ancient.html

Postcards from the past: Krak des Chevaliers, Syria

21 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, Postcards from the past

≈ 16 Comments

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castles, Krak des Chevaliers, Syria


January, 2001

I travel from Hama to Krak des Chevaliers with an American working in Lebanon and Abu Farouz who drives us in a yellow Mercedes. This castle is supposed to be the epitome of castles and was Lawrence of Arania’s favourite. We pass through increasingly hilly country. Rich red-soil fields line the road, wrested from rocky terrain, out of which grows the assassin castle, Musayef, and the town that surrounds it. Out of a high patch of black-specked white rock spouts a multitude of TV aerials. So many castles are overlaid on Musayef I only have a faint memory of it.

After Musayef, the hillsides are terraced and we see the cross rather than the crescent. Olive and apple trees dot the hillside. On a narrow windy road through town we nearly bang into an old woman leading a cow out of the house. We approach Krak des Chevaliers, houses crawling up the hill towards it. Abu Farouz parks the Mercedes at the foot of a towering turret, and I have two hours to stretch the imagination into the past: soaring ceilings; arches leading into stables, men’s quarters, kitchens. Round turrets and square turrets. Arrow slits. Ramparts that the brave-with-heights can still walk along. Stone stairs worn away by centuries of feet, sometimes grown over with moss or grass. Spectacular views, down terracing into a valley, and then more valleys. I sit on a top step and eat a quarter of a grapefruit. Sitting again in the Knight’s Hall, I draw the attention of a would-be guide who wants to show me things: snow-covered mountains through arrow slits; hollows in the ground connected somehow to the storage of oil; a huge oven; dark corridors where guards used to pace. The prayer hall is very beautiful – arched ceilings, decorated doorways, a stone pulpit. I wonder how on earth the Crusaders and their cohorts kept warm in such grandeur.

While the driver and my fellow-passenger eat, I perch on a low wall at the base of the castle and watch little girls play elastics. They tell me their names and the Arabic words for thongs, boots and sneakers. A man about my age with one leg joins me companionably and shows me the pictures on coins. (It only occurs to me now there might have been a sub-text!)

Other images from the day? A donkey under a tottering burden of sticks. A woman emerging from the trees carrying a  load of firewood.  A boy pushing a tractor around a corner in the middle of a hillside town. A truckload of carrots heading into Hama. A Christian cemetery. Bandy-legged old women with walking sticks. A motorbike with a cargo of seven rolled up carpets. These are all morning images. The journey back to Hama is along a nondescript highway.



You’ll have to be satisfied by words this week: for some incomprehensible reason I don’t have any photos except the blurry one I’ve used. photos, There are spectacular images in some of the links below.

 Report on damage in 2014 here: 2015 here: 2016 here

Postcards from the past: the Azem Palace, Hama

15 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, Postcards from the past

≈ 4 Comments

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Azm Palace, Hama, Syria

January, 2001

On my first reconnaissance in Hama I come across an alley with balcony overhangs. Eventually I discover that the museum I am looking for in an old Ottoman house is near this alley. The outside is uninviting, almost grim, but when I push open the door and pass through the ticket office I am in a courtyard shaded by a magnolia, huge, twisted and glossy-leaved. A fountain is in the centre and in a domed muralled recess cushions and a table set for coffee. I hear the sound of water: the unobtrusive guard has switched on the fountain. 

Up bare stone stairs is another open courtyard, sunny this time. Down one side are three rooms, with figures going about their business. One is a kitchen with a slatted ceiling and huge woven mats of raffia on the wall. At mantelpiece height, fretwork tilts out from the wall. There are two women figurines, one grinding and one spinning. The other two rooms are richer, with intricately painted walls, ceilings and cupboards. The window recesses, high up, are arched and barred with a stonework design at the top of the arch. 

I clomp the vestiges of yesterday’s mud onto the marble floors as I cross the courtyard. Here the area is pillared and domed, each marble pillar with a different decorative base.  A flat ceiling is richly painted and carved, and so are casement shutters and the dome. When the guard sees me trying to photograph the ceiling he disappears and comes back with a wooden door which he places on the floor, and indicates that I should lie on it to photograph.

Downstairs again, I come across the hammam: couches and cylindrical openings in the domed roof to let in the light. Modern-looking cupboards are full of modern-looking hammam wear.

I leave, delighted with the treasures hidden behind an unprepossessing door. 


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For more information have a look here. http://sana.sy/en/?p=68851

As far as I can tell this palace is undamaged.

Hama, Syria

07 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, Postcards from the past

≈ 15 Comments

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Hama, Syria, waterwheels

January, 2001

I leave Palmyra on the bus for Homs, after a false start which has me walking a kilometre in the wrong direction. The surly driver rubs his fingers for extra cash to stash my backpack, and then moves me three times. I am a bit tense, keeping my eyes and my knees to myself. In Homs, I board the Hama bus and wait. We are surrounded by brightly-coloured grimy buses with mud flaps down to the road and roof racks painted in stained glass patterns and colours. People get on. We begin to fill up. Men try to sell glasses, kleenex, peppermints, purple socks (I’m tempted) and chocolates. People, impatient, get off.  Eventually our driver starts the motor. Eventually we leave. On the outskirts of Homs Bedouin tents mingle with more conventional houses. It begins to rain. In Hama at last, the lad drops my bag, coat side down in the mud, and then has the nerve to rummage through my coins for a tip. I reach my hotel, avoid the downstairs massage parlour, and retreat to the luxury of a warm room and a hot shower.

The next morning I am reluctant to get moving, but I feel much better when I emerge into mild drizzle. And there are the water wheels, noria, huge and wooden, stone aqueduct arching over the green river. Classy restaurants have the riverfront bolted up, but a gate is open and I walk through for close up views. I am alone, as I always am at 7am.

I walk up the hill to the citadel, a derelict park with neatly cultivated garden beds, rickety marble seats and views over the city. I can see at least ten minarets from any one spot. And from there I spy the last of the norias: two, one on each side of a pool where ducks plash, surrounded by bare poplars. Up the hill are the new buildings, the kind that sport pink inverted nipples in stucco.


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For an update on Hama, if you can bear it, click on these links

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zqaklWVj00s
https://www.newsdeeply.com/syria/articles/2016/09/13/re-engineering-the-population-in-hama
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/hama-offensive-indication-syrian-oppositions-decline/

Postcards from the past: Qala-at ibn Ma’an, Palmyra

24 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, Postcards from the past

≈ 12 Comments

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Palmyra, Qala-at ibn Maan, Syria

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a postcard. Life in the present has taken over. But I’m settled back at home now, and ready to reminisce again. I’ve outlined the background to my backpacking trip through Syria and Jordan in 2000-2001 here.

31 December, 2001

Despite logistical qualms, the journey from Damascus to Palmyra is easy. When I look uncertain at the bus station, a crowd swells around me and I’m ushered to the ticket office. The bus outside says “Palmira” in English, not the elegant and mysterious snuggles of Arabic that I am expecting. I choose a seat, on the wrong side for views as it happens. The combination of sun, dust and breath-steam makes the view pretty well invisible, although I do see one village with two camels, and a blue-green mosque. Ezekiel gives me a lift to my accommodation, the Al Afqa, in an incredibly decrepit bright red mini bus.

I eat a late breakfast of olives, boiled egg, and apricot conserve full of whole apricots, accompanied by English pop music, chirruping caged birds, sunshine, and fellow travellers who make comments about my age. I am enticed by a ruined castle on a hill, which proves to be a sultan’s fortress, Qala-at ibn Maan. I arrive at the entrance, and hesitate. If I want to go in I’ve got to walk over a drawbridge, high above the moat, and I don’t like heights. Mahomet, no older than 10, bails me up to sell me postcards. He says “How come I’m young and I can speak English, and you’re old and you can’t speak Arabic?” Not the first, or last, time I’m shamed by only having one language. I brave the drawbridge and I’m waylaid again, this time by the guard who sits me down to a small glass of very sweet tea. 

Eventually I’m free to roam around the ruins, hugging the wall to climb as high as I can. I sit amongst turrets with views out to the ineffable barrenness of the hills and down over villages. I’m enjoying the ease of solitude after the tenseness of being with people whose language I don’t speak. Then I’m interrupted by Gehad and his mates, who take my photo and write what I assume to be an address in my notebook. A man with a broom comes to sweep cigarette butts into the moat, and tells me “Kasheesh” with mime and laughter. I think he’s saying “broom” and later realise he’s probably asking for a tip. The next day I see him in the museum and he greets me like an old friend.

I sit quietly and contemplatively, moving with the sun, until the sunset crowds begin to arrive. On Mahomet’s advice I don’t return the way I came but down a narrow track he swears is “flat”. I find it quite steep, and scree as well. However I make it down, slowly and on my backside, feeling proud when I reach the bitumen – until suddenly I trip and I’m flat on my face. Is this what he meant by flat?

Back at the hotel, there’s an almighty hammering: it sounds as if 2001 will be ushered in anything but quietly.

 

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That was then. This is now, an update thanks to Wikipedia. I hesitate to be the tourist in the middle of current devastation in Syria.

“The historic site in 2013 was placed on the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger due to the ongoing Syrian Civil War. The castle was captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant during the Palmyra offensive in May 2015. It was recaptured by Syrian government forces in another offensive in March 2016. Retreating ISIS fighters blew up parts of the castle, including the stairway leading to the entrance, causing extensive damage. The basic structure is still intact, and Syrian director of antiquities Maamoun Abdelkarim stated that the damage is reparable and the castle is to be restored.  The castle was captured by ISIL once again in December 2016.” In March 2017 it was in the hands of the Russians.

Backpacking in Syria and Jordan, 2000: background

15 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in Postcards from the past, words only

≈ 15 Comments

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Jordan, Syria

What am I, a woman in my mid-fifties, doing, lugging a backpack around Syria and Jordan on my own in 2000?

I’ll tell you. I’m trying to keep up with my family. 

J is walking the scenic rim, guided by a mud map and a snake, and sailing a boat across Moreton Bay – he’s never sailed before.

H and his mate (and dogs) are exploring the tip of Cape York.

S has just embarked on fatherhood.

F and her then partner are packing their pushbikes for a ride through Borneo, Sarawak, Bangladesh and India.

R is picking tomatoes manically to top up the budget so she can cycle alone through Laos, southern China, across the Sinai, through Jerusalem, to Sardinia, via Paris.

And me? I’m living a banal, routine life, going to work and coming home (mind you, sometimes that’s three days later.) I settle down with the Saturday paper, and suddenly I’m on full alert. Sydney University is looking for paying volunteers to go on a dig at Pella in Jordan. That’s me. Always interested in archeology since reading my uncle’s books as a child. In funds, because that same uncle has just left me money. Familiar (sort of) with travel in the middle east after three weeks in Egypt a few years before.

So I apply, face the interview, get my teeth and appendix checked, and feel secure in the thought of travelling with the group.

Until I settle down again with the Saturday paper. This time I open the travel section, and I’m confronted by a full page colour photo of the Treasury at Petra viewed through the slit at the end of the siq. That photo! Well, I think. Nothing daring about hopping on a plane with a group. What if …? And before I know it, I’ve booked flight to Syria and extended my stay in Jordan.

That’s how I end up in Damascus, backpacked and travel weary, muttering the mantra against my terror: “Other people do it: why not me?” There’s my hotel, the Al Haramein, just up that alley. A man accosts me offering to carry my bag. I say “No thanks”. He lunges and tweaks my nipple. I say “Get out of it.” He disappears. I feel my self-confidence expand: if I can deal with that, jet lagged and in a strange place, I can deal with anything.

On my first morning alone in the Middle East I make my way to the ancient covered market and walk under ruined Roman arches to the Umayyad mosque with its striped walls and unreadable Arabic calligraphy. I sit on the cold marble of a decayed fountain and watch the orange juice man throw water over his uncut oranges; boys playing shuttlecock, old men drinking tea, boys cantering on horses decked in bells, cars moving through impossibly narrow spaces. Then the haunting call to prayer.

That night I ditch my go-go-go itinerary, because I’ve discovered the pleasures of following my nose and of pausing. 

Such is the personal background to my next series of Postcards from the Past. The other unspeakably awful background is the destruction and death taking place in Syria now, which make my blithe reminiscences seem almost indecent.

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